


but stand still is all i did

by sixtywattgloom



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, F/M, mostly a lot of rambling, referenced past keyleth/kashaw, referenced vex & vax
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 16:40:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6432229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixtywattgloom/pseuds/sixtywattgloom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>She is not nine years old now; when she dreams, there is a boy and there is a girl and she watches as they die for each other, again and again and again.</i> keyleth thinks about vex having comes to terms with dying, about romance, about the twins; set at some ambiguous point in the not-distant future. mild spoilers for ep 47.</p>
            </blockquote>





	but stand still is all i did

**Author's Note:**

> just a rambly little ficlet that i didn't mean to write at all?? i already had several things started for other fandoms, but then keyleth's reaction to vex's I'M COOL WITH DYING IT'S FINE comment happened and this was born. so here's my first cr fic and hopefully it isn't the worst? KEYLETH JUST REALLY DOESN'T WANT HER FAVE TWINS TO DIE ON HER OK :( title taken from tegan & sara's i was a fool.
> 
> for reference, i'm [5horbust](http://twitter.com/5horbust) on twitter and [claudiadonovan](http://claudiadonovan.tumblr.com) on tumblr.

Vex says _I’m not afraid to die anymore_ , and it’s the single scariest thing that Keyleth’s ever heard.

Vex says _I’m not afraid to die anymore_ , and Keyleth is right back in that mostly-dark tomb, watching the life drain from one of her—what? Friends? Family? (She’d like to think so; she’s said as much before) People with whom she kills a lot of really terrible things in really stupid ways? Keyleth is in that tomb, watching the world fall apart, watching Vax pledge his life to save his sister’s. Keyleth is in that tomb, still covered in parts of a Beholder she’d rather not name, and Vex is dying, and there’s nothing she can do but sit there and _watch._  

Vax has always played this game: face-first and reckless and sacrificial. Everyone else’s safety before his own, like reflex, like a special Vax intersection of heroic and stupid. It’s one of the reasons his—his— _affection_ (her face warms even at the thought, like she’s twelve years old and someone will find her out) toward her has always weighed so heavily. 

Surely she will outlive them all, if she treads the path of destiny her ancestors have designed. That is enough uncertainty. But Vax—Vax would give his life up on _instinct_. Tomorrow she could lose him, and it wouldn’t even bring him pause.

(And, sure, there are other reservations. Like, she can count the number of kisses she’s shared on one hand, okay, and she still doesn’t know how to talk about that twist just behind her ribcage, and she’s trying to work on the talking thing, but words maybe aren’t _totally_ her strong suit, especially the ones about putting her mouth on someone else’s mouth. 

And maybe it’s also hard to reconcile her nine-year-old fantasies with the reality of her present. Fantasies about boys who would smile at her, boys who would hold her face between their hands and tell her she was the most important choice they could ever make.

Here, romance looks like Vax, unsteady and bleeding out, deliriously confessing his love. Here, romance looks like two people with no clue and a world doing its very best to see them dead.

Kash was easy. Kash was easy because he could kiss her, dramatically, unexpectedly, like the climax of a story, and than disappear. Another nine-year-old fantasy, vanishing into smoke. Or, well: until he came back, and they shared a conversation so awkward no one would ever include it in any story, and all she _wanted_ was to vanish into smoke. (Or mist. If she hadn’t been so busy trying to remember how syllables strung together into words, she might have done exactly that.)

Vax is never easy.)

But Vex was different. Vex had never been nearly so…relentlessly self-sacrificing as her brother. Vex liked being alive, and she liked gold, and as much as she wanted to keep everyone safe, she never found caution disposable. Vex anchored Vax to the world in a way no one else could. (He would throw it all away for her as easy as breathing.)

If there was ever anyone to come out on Keyleth’s side, it was usually Vex. If ever her moments of hesitation were shared, they were usually shared with Vex. Vex, who wanted to live.

 _I’m not afraid to die anymore_. Keyleth buries her face in her hands in her little (very temporary, always temporary) room in Whitestone and makes a noise somewhere between frustrated and hopeless. The tears come angry tonight, and her hands tremble in her lap, and she wishes suddenly there was something she could hurt. Something terrible. (She wonders if this is what Grog feels like all the time, like there’s something pressing down on his chest and crawling under his skin, hungry and restless and desperate. She wonders if it’s comforting or terrifying that she might spend her first night understanding Grog.) 

Keyleth scrubs furiously at her cheeks and thinks about all the things she wants to say to Vex: _you’re supposed to stay here, you’re supposed to want things, you’re supposed to be material and selfish and very, very opposed to dying._

_You’re supposed to stay alive. You’re supposed to stay alive with me._

Keyleth thinks about Kash, and about Vax, and about Vex, and she thinks about the warmth in the center of her chest, about the way it curdles into terror in the pit of her stomach.

She thinks about Vax reaching for her hand, and she thinks about Vex’s hands pressed against her cheeks, and she thinks about two twins who have made death an ally.

When she was nine years old, she dreamed of a boy who would hold her hand.

She is not nine years old now; when she dreams, there is a boy and there is a girl and she watches as they die for each other, again and again and again. Every morning, finding them alive feels a little more like a miracle. (She wonders how deep this pit of miracles runs.)

She is not nine years old now, and maybe romance is a boy and a girl who leave her in the same room. Maybe romance is the door that closes behind them and all of the tears that she can never seem to help. 

Or maybe it’s this—waking up the next morning and finding Vex downstairs with a spare coffee in hand, telling her, “You know I’m not _looking_ for ways to die or anything, darling,” like it’s the most casual thing in the world. Like it’s the kind of spontaneous conversation Vex might accidentally spark in the morning.

“Good,” Keyleth says, bleary-eyed and kind of _full_. “That’s—that’s really, really good, Vex. Great, even.”

“ _Spectacular_ ,” Vex says, like she does when she’s making fun of Keyleth, only she’s smiling a little around her coffee like she’s trying not to, and she’s smiling when Vax materializes the way he usually does, and then it’s just the three of them, drinking coffee in the middle of a world that’s probably burning down.

Part of her wants to hold them here forever. Part of her wants to tell the entire world to screw itself, and to tell them to screw themselves, too, for the panic that has become her morning routine. For the hollowness behind her ribs.

Instead, she says something like, _Hey, guys, uh, who’s ready to kill some dragons?_ and makes a hand gesture that she thinks is supposed to seem enthusiastic. Vex rolls her eyes and Vax looks at her like he thinks he’s found answers to questions she’s not sure she wants to know, but when they smile it doesn’t feel very different at all.

Romance, she thinks: shared coffee in a mid-morning haze with a side of probable murder by lunchtime.

Or maybe there’s just something really, really wrong with her.

(If they’re all that stands between the world and a conclave of dragons, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.)


End file.
